With the advent of the computer age, computer software users have grown accustomed to user-friendly software applications that help them write, calculate, organize, prepare presentations, send and receive electronic mail, make music, and the like. For example, modern electronic mail applications allow users to send and receive electronic mail to and from other users. Modern electronic mail applications also allow users to store sent or received mail in a variety of user-established storage folders. Modern electronic calendar applications allow users to maintain a variety of calendar information, such as appointments, in an electronic medium. Modern contacts applications allow users to maintain, sort, and access contact information, such as addresses, telephone numbers, electronic mail addresses, and the like, for a variety of persons or entities.
For such software applications, a computer-generated user interface is typically provided to allow users to access and utilize the functionality of a given application along with data input, sent, or received by the user. For example, a typical electronic mail application user interface provides a view pane in which the contents of a given electronic mail message may be displayed. A second pane in the form of a mailbox pane (e.g., inbox, outbox or sent items mailbox) is typically provided to allow a user to see a listing of all received or sent mail items.
Often, such software applications also provide a navigation pane for allowing the user to navigate through various functionality items associated with the software application and/or data items associated with a given user. For example, a navigation pane for an electronic mail application may provide a list of all electronic mail types, such as received mail, sent mail, unread mail, and the like. Selection of one of these mail types causes the associated mail to be provided in other portions of the user interface. For example, selection of an inbox mail item from the navigation pane causes the inbox pane to be launched and to be populated with all received electronic mail and causes the electronic mail view pane to be populated with the contents of one of the listed received mail items (e.g., the first electronic mail item in the list). Similarly, selection of a sent mail data type from the navigation pane causes a sent mailbox pane to be launched and to be populated with all sent electronic mail items and causes the electronic mail view pane to be populated with the contents of one of the listed sent email items (e.g., the first sent mail item in the list). The electronic mail navigation pane may also include a list of email folders in which a user manually or automatically stores various email items.
A navigation pane for an electronic calendar application may provide one or more date picker controls for allowing the user to navigate to different months, weeks, and dates in an electronic calendar for receiving or editing calendar items, such as appointments. An electronic calendar application navigation pane may also include one or more folders associated with different calendars (e.g., business calendar or personal calendar). A navigation pane for a contacts application may provide a list of contacts folders, such as business contacts, personal contacts, and the like.
Many users of such applications like to display all of the above-described panes simultaneously. For example, many electronic mail users display the mail view pane, the mailbox pane and the navigation pane simultaneously. Users of electronic calendar applications often like to display a navigation pane simultaneously with a displayed calendar. Users of a contacts application may desire to simultaneously display a contacts application navigation pane with a user interface containing selected contacts information. Unfortunately, displaying the navigation pane along with other content panes often consumes too much space on the user's computer display screen which causes the information displayed in the other panes to be truncated or displayed over a number of lines which results in a less than satisfying visual presentation and/or user experience. This problem is particularly troublesome for small computer displays.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved navigation pane that may be selectively toggled between a normal mode and narrow mode for optimally utilizing computer display space. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.